Villain was here
Previous Chapter ***** I’ve never been a horror fan. My schizophrenia drives me to bouts of paranoia from simply existing in the real world; I don’t need to fan the flames by filling my skull with vengeful poltergeists and masked slashers and possessed dolls. Five minutes into my web research, I realized there are way more paranormal fanatics out there then there are high-functioning schizophrenics. I found message boards dedicated to urban legends, succubi, alleged ghost photos, skinwalkers, glitches in the matrix. Rituals for summoning spirits, rituals for exorcising demons. I understood, then, why humans are drawn to ritual. Ceremony. If you do X, then Y can’t hurt you. If you recite ten Hail Marys while counting plastic beads on a rosary, God forgives you for masturbating. If you throw sawdust over your shoulder while spinning around three times at midnight when Venus is in retrograde, the boy you like will kiss you before next sundown. If you walk your kids to the arcade, they’ll come home safe. If I take my medication every night, I’ll stay sane. The diversity and sheer mass of the online supernatural communities was overwhelming, and I wasn’t sure how seriously I should take advice from Spooky_Sparklebutt1998 on Reddit. I needed a ringer. And I knew just the ringer who’d go nuts for a little girl ghost, especially a little ghost girl who’d once lived in his house. Travis cheerfully answered my call. He’d been hoping to see me again, he said, because I seemed really cool. And as soon as I mentioned the possibility of a lurking spirit, he promised to come right over. The two of us sat on my back porch, watching the sun sink into the orange horizon as I told him the same story I’d told Luke earlier that day. He gave me his undivided attention, as Luke had, but in contrast to Luke’s stoic pragmatism, Travis listened with an eager intensity. It was refreshing to have a conversation with someone who wouldn’t lecture me about medication. When I came to the part about the scratches on my closet door, Travis asked to see them. “They look old,” he said, stepping out of the small enclosure. “Yeah, I guess.” “I mean, you guys rented the house for years. Maybe some kid pushed his little brother in the closet as a joke.” I nodded. Luke suggested the same thing. They had a point. “The rest, though, is all in line with a presence reaching out to you. Sometimes the spirit plane manifests itself in dreams. The girl - Mathilde - what was she like?” “I told you she was autistic,” I said. “She didn’t talk. I’m not sure whether she was selectively mute or cognitively incapable of verbal communication, but the most they ever taught her was, like, three words of sign language.” Travis nodded. “So her IQ was unknown.” “Actually, her IQ may have been exceptionally high. She was an amazing artist - like, light years beyond most kids her age. And she had a photographic memory. Like, she’d see someone for a second and be able to draw them perfectly, right down to the shoes they were wearing.” “That’s cool,” Travis said. “Did she… was she bullied? Abused? Anything that would keep her spirit from being at rest?” “I don’t know. I… I don’t think she was abused, her family seemed really loving. Maybe. I mean, if she was, no one was telling. And kids at my school thought she was weird, but I don’t remember anyone hassling her.” I thought about it. If Mathilde had been someone’s victim, she'd have been a particularly helpless one. Actually, maybe not. She just… there was something about her. Those drawings of hers, always with her name and the date. She couldn’t talk, but if someone did her wrong, I suspected her drawings would have implicated them. I remembered my dad and the Corona folder. “She watched people,” I told Travis. “She’d stare. We all assumed she was locked in her own little world. I mean, she was, in most ways. But she noticed things. And she was so quiet you’d forget about her.” Travis nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, so, there were probably a lot of things she’d have wanted to communicate, but couldn’t. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to do now. Give you a message.” I experienced an unwelcome flashback to my earlier thought processes - my musings about repressed memories, Tommy scribbling frantic words in his notebook hours before he took his own life. I ignored it all. “Okay, so you think we can contact her?” I asked Travis. “With your Ouija Board?” Travis did. But he wanted to perform the ceremony at his place, to eliminate the very real risk of my shag carpet going up in flames and us providing the local firefighters with a fun story to tell rookies. ***** Travis’s room had once been Mathilde’s. If I looked past the Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga posters, I could imagine the space as it had once been - pink bedsheets, flowery wallpaper, porcelain dolls, every flat space littered with colored pencils and messy stacks of drawings. Out a large square window, I had a perfect view of my front yard. The setup for the ritual was a series of stereotypes to match my expectations. Travis lit black candles in a five-point formation and set up his incense burner, flooding the room with the scent of vanilla and rosewater. He turned out the lights. At the midpoint between the five candles, he laid out the Ouija board. It would have seemed more threatening if the box didn’t read Hasbro. Travis sat on the ground and beckoned for me to do the same. I positioned myself across from him. We both placed our hands on the planchard. He closed his eyes. “Close your eyes and take deep breaths,” he said. I did, making an effort to ignore the cold wooden triangle under my fingers. In, out. In, out. Smoke and vanilla and rosewater inundated my sinuses, settled against my skin like sweat, etherized my racing thoughts. The vice that had clamped my brain for days loosened its hold. I swayed, I slumped, I slid down, down, down. In, out. In, out. My nose prickled, and my euphoria shattered. The scent in the room was different. Organic rot, sour grass clippings, ethane gas. I opened my eyes. There she was. Mathilde sat by Travis’s side, cross-legged, pink dress folded demurely around her knees, ice-blonde tresses cascading over her shoulders. She smiled, clear blue eyes hopeful. Perhaps Travis’s incense truly did possess transcendent properties because, for the first time, the sight of Mathilde didn’t incite my anxiety. For the first time, I wasn’t afraid. I’d never seen her so close. Her glassy eyes reflected light like a china doll, her perfect pink lips barely parted, and her ivory skin emitted its own radiance. Then she flickered like a hologram and disappeared. Travis opened his eyes and glanced over at me. I gave him a ‘what now?’ smirk. “Spirit, whoever you may be… we welcome you. Do you have anything to say to us?” I looked about, half-expecting Mathilde to reappear. She didn’t. The planchard sprung into action. Like a mouse beneath my fingers, it shot across the board. S-T-O-P “Stop!” Travis said out loud. B-L-O-C-K-I-N-G-M-E “Blocking me!” he finished. We stared at each other. His eyes nearly protruded from their sockets and his face had lost its color. “Is this Mathilde Koperski?” Travis asked, in a tone too agitated for my comfort. Another tug at my hands. The planchard landed on the word “YES.” Travis shuddered. “Prove it." One more time, the wooden piece swung, dragging me with it. C-O-R-O-N-A. The planchard went limp. Travis pulled his hands away. “Corona,” I stammered. “It was her. It was really her.” “Say goodbye,” he said to me. Entranced, I moved the wooden triangle over the word “GOODBYE.” Travis jumped up, flipped the light switch, and blew out the candles. The incense must have burned out, too, because the smell had greatly diminished. My head ached. I felt thousands of miles away from my body. The red pill I’d swallowed turned to acid in my stomach. Corona. The Corona project. Mathilde’s picture. It was her. Because there’s no way Travis would have known the significance of the word “Corona.” And I sure as shit wasn’t moving the planchard. ***** What freaked me out most about the situation was how freaked out Travis was. Horror fanatic Travis; Travis, who owned an Ouija board and had, according to him, used it to contact spirits in abandoned asylums and murder houses, was blanched and goose-bumped and speaking in a harried falsetto. “It… jumped,” he repeated, as we sat in his living room, sipping coke with a hefty portion of leftover rum. “The planchard. It’s never moved like that before. Every other time it just, sort of, crawled. And all those other times, I’m pretty sure it was our collective subconscious moving the planchard, not spirits. But up there…” He took a long swig of his drink. I’d felt it, too. “What do you think it means?” he asked. “Stop blocking me.” “I have no fucking idea.” Travis took another healthy swallow, then a deep breath. “I’ll break out some of my other equipment tomorrow,” he concluded. “See if we can get a better idea of what she’s trying to tell us.” “Should I find some holy water?” I laughed nervously. Travis didn’t. “If you’re religious, you should. Do whatever’s going to make you feel safe. It’s really mind over matter with these things. The candles, the incense, all of that crap is a big ‘come in - we’re open’ sign for spirits. If you convince yourself they can’t contact you, they won’t.” I thought about the rituals I’d perused that evening. I needed something, but it wasn’t holy water. I drove to Ralphs. I bought a can of Nesquik chocolate milk mix. Before I went to sleep, I poured a line of brown powder in front of my closet door. ***** I awoke itching. I’d been leaning against the scraggly trunk of an oak tree, face buried in my crossed arms, and there must have been ants crawling under the bark. I was halfway through a count of 100. The bark didn’t smell like it was supposed to. It smelled like rotting vegetables, grass clippings, and putrification. Oh, fuck. I stood upright and frantically surveyed my surroundings. Behind me: the play structure and the swings and the dirty sand of Allister Park. In the distance, I could see 5th Avenue. It was late afternoon. In front of me: The Forest. Oak trees with long, unruly branches fighting for space. High, weedy grass. Prickly bushes erupting amongst a carpet of dried acorns. I knew I was dreaming. Then I realized I was in control. I was looking for something. I cautiously goose-stepped through the brush, anticipating Mathilde’s appearance at any moment. I noticed I was wearing baggy cargo pants and red Adidas, my childhood favorite pair. My hands were small, pudgy, and soft. I heard a giggle. I jumped. But it wasn’t Mathilde. It was Tommy - twelve-year-old Tommy, wearing saggy jeans and his favorite Blink-182 t-shirt. He’d jumped from the sturdy, low tree branch on which he’d been crouching out of sight. Laughing, he escaped into the oakwood obstacle course. Hide-and-seek. We were playing hide-and-seek, as we often did at Allister Park, though we’d always stayed out of The Forest. I kept walking. Deeper and deeper, further and further from 5th Avenue, until dusk settled around me. I turned in a circle. I could no longer see the play structure or the street and, surrounded on all sides by moonlit trunks and dark canopies, I had no idea which direction I’d come from or where I was going. A flutter of panic. Then a murmuring. A syllabic, tonal rumbling, the unholy splice of a freeway overpass and a babbling baby. A glistening tangle fell from a tree. In front of me landed… a person? No. Definitely not. It crouched on all fours; the hind feet were clubbed, and the forepaws looked like oval slabs of blue-black flesh with two fat, long, protruding fingers. Its naked body was completely covered in deep wrinkles and protruding, pus-filled warts. Its head was a smooth, balloon-shaped orb with no eyes or nose. Only a mouth. A wide, gaping, lipless black hole. The thing squared itself. It paced, catlike, back and forth. Its mouth was arranged into a perfect ‘O’, producing the low-pitched, syllabic hum. CRACK! CRACK! Flush with adrenaline, I whirled around. There were more of them, blue-black humanoids dropping from the trees like monkeys. They surrounded me. The first monstrosity stretched its circular mouth, obsidian flesh regressing until its head was nothing but a spiraling concavity. It extended a long, black tongue. Then it pounced. I dove; landed hard on the uneven ground. I’d felt its fleshy paws on me, cold like clay. The others took predatory steps forward, backs arched, regimented like a pack of wolves. I leapt to my feet. I ran. I ran and ran and ran, never pausing, never looking back, twigs assaulting my arms and tearing at my clothes, dark tree trunks caught in the fragile moonlight only seconds before I’d have careened into them, the soles of my shoes slipping and shifting against layers of fallen acorns. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. My toe latched onto a root, and I fell. I desperately rolled over and upright. The blue-black, Hoover-mouthed creatures were gone. And I knew where I was. I was staring up at an ancient, withering oak tree with splintering, skeletal limbs. Its trunk was at least a meter thick. The cracking bark was an unhealthy whitish-grey. Swollen knots arranged themselves like two spherical eyes and a thick, lecherous mouth. Scraggly roots broke through the dry, cracking earth. “Wanna know the way? Ask me to play. Wanna know the way? Ask me to play.” Metallic. Robotic. Mathilde. I frantically scanned my surroundings. But she was nowhere to be seen. I turned back to the tree. If I’d been conscious, I would have screamed. The knots were no longer knots. They were glowing orange eyes. The bloated lips parted, exposing rotting, knifelike teeth. The branches were no longer branches but curling, scaled tentacles. Beyond the broad, diseased trunk, coiled in tentacles, something small and red caught my eye. As though it were presenting me with a gift, The Daemon pulled its prize from behind its back. Micah. Micah, wearing his red sweater, eyes bloodshot and petrified, scratched and bruised. The thing’s heavy extremities constricted his arms, legs, and chest. Before another creeping appendage clamped across his mouth, before the malicious orange glow became blinding, before the trees blurred and twisted like a whirlpool, sweeping me into oscillating blackness, I heard his cries. “Help me, Ansley! Save me! Ansley! Let me out!” ***** June 8, 2017 I woke up drenched in sweat. My head swam. I flopped out of bed, shuffled to the bathroom, and puked. It was 6:30. Too wound up to sleep, I plodded to the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee, reconfiguring the pieces of my dream. I wished I could un-see the blue-black, wrinkled cat-people. Micah was there. The Daemon had him. I’d heard Mathilde. Even now, I can still hear that squeaky, mechanical chirp. “Wanna know the way? Ask me to play.” Stop blocking me. We’d been playing hide-and-seek. The ghost of Mathilde was offering to be some sort of spirit guide. She’d been… sending me all the nightmares I’d been having. To help me. To help me find something. Micah. She wanted to help me find Micah. If I asked her to play, she’d lead me to… what? His body? Some clue as to what had become of him? She’d been trying to show me “the way” since I’d returned home. But she couldn't because, somehow, I was blocking her. I puzzled over it, sipping black coffee, until I heard footsteps from the master bedroom. As pale sunlight washed through the kitchen window, my sister appeared in the hallway. “You’re up early,” she said to me as she poured herself a cup. “Couldn’t sleep." She picked up the can of chocolate milk I’d purchased. “Shit, it’s been years since I’ve had this stuff.” “I felt nostalgic.” She snorted. “I remember you used to put it all over our room. You and your friends were ridiculous.” “Just in front of the closet,” I said. “To keep away the monster. The Nesquik bunny saved you from being eaten alive.” She shook her head and sat across from me at the table. “Did you get a chance to go through that mail? I don’t want to…” “Hey Leesh,” I cut her off. “Do you remember the day Micah disappeared?” Mid-sip of coffee, she coughed and sputtered. “Yeah, why?” she said quickly, almost nervously. She wrapped a finger around a loose strand of hair. “I was just thinking about it. I mean, Mom and Dad were out signing some papers for the Miami house, and you were watching me all day. Did anything weird happen? Like, did Mathilde do anything?” She shook her head dramatically. “No. Nothing with Mathilde… she never left her room, remember? You and Tommy got into Mr. Carlyle’s backyard. I think you knocked down something big, because he came over later to talk to Mom and Dad.” “Okay. And then we went to the park, right?” She nodded. “You guys walked over there.” “And Colonel Lewis actually complained to Mom and Dad?” “Yeah. He said he didn’t mind you guys being in the yard, but that you weren’t allowed to climb on the cinderblocks. I think a big pile of them collapsed. Why are you going on about this now?” I shrugged. I took the hint the conversation was over, and that she wasn’t going to reveal anything useful. I wouldn’t have even pushed her as hard if it hadn’t been for the hair-twirling. Alicia’s my sister, I know all her tells. She wraps her hair around her fingers when she’s lying. ***** Next Chapter Category:NickyXX